Will be arriving there on the 5th of October – come by after that for visual fun from the world’s most diverse habitat.
5th October. Yep after neverending comfy seats on many planes and nearly two days and fun sleepful nights, landed in Ecuador. Bleary, got picked up and delivered at a small lodge right at the top of possible cloud forest altitude on the inland, Amazon side of the Andes. Insect bothering efforts a bit second hand today, but still there are always stories to tell. See the cute tree hoppers, Family Membracidae. They live in families and often line up along juicy leaf stems. First a boy and girl story, followed by the eggs that result, being guarded by the maaa, and lastly after hatching. This mob represents all the growth stages of the extended hopper nymphs family, guarded by the maaa and paaa.
Before the night, spent some time chasing those inimitable cuti pies, the many many species of uber beautiful hummingbirds. I have no bird tele lens, just the close up insect lens, so it makes it more fun to have to be a bit more serious about the strategy.
I am travelling with mr Bee, my German native bee fanatic friend. He took time off writing a definitive book on Australian bees, all 2000 of them, and joined me here on the hunt. Today much excitement as we found a bumblebee at over 2000m altitude, and a fluffy one it is.
And then it was night. Various stick insects and crickets out and about, but it was a harvestman, a pseudo spider, that got much attention. At first it looked like it was very cute by being all knobbly. Only seeing the image on the computer revealed a wonderful horror movie mess of hitchhiker mites taking over every body bit – it was still functional, but I suspect royally pissed off.
And the last image of this first day here, is a bit whimsical – this flower is uncannily like a moose head, which quickly gave it the name Bullwinkle – for those of you old enough to remember him, and of course Boris and Natasha.
6 October. Day two less tired and did long walks along the cloud forest trails. See pic at the mountain river point. Note how the horizontal branches are covered by bromeliads and other hangers-on including beards of moss.
Lets start with funny dudes, with the aptly named ‘hedgehog flies’. They are funny to us but strike fear into the hearts of the insects they parasitise.
Next a rather handsome weevil, followed by a ladybird with very strange eating habits, scraping the surface of the leaf in intricte artistic patterns.
Last for tonite is a thing of great beauty. Those who saw my Kilimanjaro blog may remember a tortoise beetle of pure gold. Here is one with more intricate depth of colour expression.
Its a bit wowski init ? So tomorrow we descend, via plane and canoe, to the Amazon plain, to the little Waita lodge on a tributary of the mighty river. Into heat and humidity and more insect diversity than one can poke a stick at. It is also one of the last places on earth where you cannot see facebook (hooray). Zero communicado with the outside world. Alas the blog will thus be on hiatus for 7 days, and then burst with the spoils of the hunt down there.
October 7
And it was time to board a plane and descend to the Amazonian depth. The lovely cool/cold air of 2000m altitude, was replaced by being slapped in the face with a dead haddock. 1567% humidity, sitting in the full sun on a canoe for 4 hours – that sorts the hombres from the dweebs – like me.
All to get to the legendary Waita ‘Lodge’ in the Cuyabeno National Park, fairly close to the middle of nowhere.
Here the insect fun really started. My companion Mr Bee straight away found mobs of fabulous furry species of bees, not just on flowers, but better still on a little dead spiny cat fish, now immortalised in hundreds on images.
Being serious scientists we caught another fish and left its guts on the beach too, and more amazing bees with good culinary sense came to visit.
The big furry ones are Centris species, and they get all manner of chemicals from carcasses and animal wee and such. Mainly salts which freshwater fish accumulate from very low salt waters.
October 8
Weather so far hot, but not raining which would slow down the hunt. The sandy river beach has many butterflies, especially where an animal, or scientist, did wee wees…
Big news is that the biggest diaspora of Polish humans outside Poland just descended on the lodge (well 22). Fun for this human who left as a kid and has small rusty polski language with which to mingle with these travellers. Some had vodka, of course….
To butterfly people, South America is spelled Morpho – they drool at the thunk of these fabled butterflies. They flit through the forest blinking outrageous reflective blue upper wings for split seconds. But when they sit, their closed wings, though not boring, fully hide the light. Many photos of these beauties in books are of dead specimens with open wings. So imagine my smile when one landed on me – to drink my salty sweat, and then sat on a leaf and three times opened its wings long enough for a photo. Below a before and after. Yum.
October 9
The tropical forest is a harsh mistress. Forgot to use RID on one night walk, got many mozzi and black fly bites on hands holding camera, and they are infected already. No second chances here. But the insects keep performing. What would you think if you found this symmetrical star thinggi in the forest ? Very clever paper wasp architects created this palace, and live a scaredy-cat life hiding within – rather than attacking me like paper wasps should
There are a group of bees called orchid bees (see my article on them in the main six-legs-good website ….)
They pollinate orchids, yes, but are also famous for their love of perfume and exotic good looks. The boys have hollow areas in the rear legs into which they collect any new and amazing smelly bits, thus creating never before perfumes. They then perform a smellorama show for the girls who will mate with the ones with the best perfume. We carry jars with very special oily smells with us, and dab them on bits of tree to attract them from the canopy. So far slim pickinns, but see how cute this one hovering boy is.
and did I tell you about the weird thing on the way here. The river is down by 3 metres from normal, in a dry spell, and exposed on the bank were these holes – which it turns out are breeding homes made by cichlid fish, and maybe also cat fish.
October 10
So yes we are still obsessed by bees on this expedition. See first the largest one so far, a possible Centris species with a bulky fluffy body about 26mm long. And following is one of the smallest bees ever, genus Trigonisca. One of the ‘sweat bees’, about 2mm long, licking my little finger.
There are a small number of bees which provision their brood cells not just with sugary bits from flowers, but with oils. They have a relationship with flowers which provide these oils while being pollinated. Here a small Centris sp bee with oils carried along its hind legs, derived from this flower.
And although the Morpho butterfly is a bit of all right, the queen of the sandy river beach is a moth, the fabled Urania moth.
Oh and the local community dude came to show us some nice, but alas not allowed animal and plant part trinkets. My fav was of course the piranha necklace that I wanted to get for the beloved, but it would not pass customs.
Look at the nice leaves below.
a very nice leaf katydid. And below a cute baby katydid
October 11
The rains have arrived. Exciting hearing the big storms do their thing, but our activities, minus an aqualaung for the cameras, are very curtailed.
.. . . . . and did I tell you the RAINS REALLY have arrived. Just like in the picture books, this really is a rainforest now. The high humidity, has risen by several factors. My clothes are living obscenities that I do not put on – they crawl onto me. The river has risen by 2 m overnight. Happy fish.
One of the last pictures taken between rain is of the fabled hoatzin.
I first saw one when here 23 years ago. They are a genuine living fossil, remember the famous Archeopterix fossil of a “feathered dinosaur” era creature ? The haoatzin are the next step, they are true birds but still have claws on their wings. When the babies are threatened they jump into the water, can submerge, and then crawl back up to the nest using the claws.
In the wetness we even got a visit by one of the last species of the doomed arrow poison frogs. Many have fallen extinct in my lifetime. It was funny how gingerly everyone was not handling it. Just touching them can be uber dangerous.
And did I tell you its HUMID. The camera macro flash is too wet inside to keep working, and my body is too eeecky sloppy wet to keep – I will throw it away and find another one. The Polish dudes left in the middle of this weather – heading further up river, six hours by canoe, to a tent camp, yikes !
October 12
santa madonna lucia – even more wet and eecky to wake up to.
Later this day the big rain has stopped. The cook put my flash into the vat of dry rice and it has dried enough to work – for a short time anyway. The forest is more alive. See the fabulous blue flutterby and others that came out to worship the return of mr sun.
The pic above also has 6 species of lovely native bees – such is the diversity madness here.
Later in the night found this netcasting spider. They are cute as they hang upside down over a surface, like a leaf, with a rectangle of lovely blue sticky web stretched between four legs. If something walks past it ‘casts’ the net down to ensnare it.
October 13
Last full day in the Waita Lodge. It was time for an expedition to the giant kapok tree, where my most legendary insect of my short life had been spotted months ago. The kapok is the monster of the Amazon, standing twice as high as the general canopy and home to a complex ecosysytem of its own. See the difference below.
And the insect in question is the ‘harlequin’ beetle, the grandest longicorn beetle of them all, about 6cm long, with majestic long front legs. I first saw it in a picture book in Poland as a callow kiddy, and my fate was sealed. After much hot steamy forest walk we arrived at the monster and inspected it thoroughly. A vulture was nesting in one corner on the ground, bats were hiding in another fold of its buttresses, and many other critters, but alas, my holy grail was not to be. So here is the tiny sad hunter, and below a picture by a luckier man, Rui Oliveira Santos, from flicker.
and on the walk back found one of the truly weird denizens of the Amazon. The first picture of my main insect blog is the head of one of these ‘grasshoppers’ that I found here 23 years ago. See the whole body here.
October 14
Day of much travel. Back on the boats for 3-4 hours up river, now against a current set up by the rains. And of course in the midday sun. Then a bus thinggi to the oil town of Coca, a bit of a sodom-gomorrah sprawl, where we gots us a posh hotel where the great god aircon dwells. Much was the celebration of a long shower followed by being in a room with evil mr slimy humidity defeated.
In the grounds of this hotel was a shocking sight. “what the f…” ” no, they didnt” “surely not” came to mind. Yes they had kitsch statues of the noble savages, even with a tamed bambi in attendance, and one about to kill one of their sacred animals, they would not attack. You may have to avert your gaze.
It was time to get out and fly back to Quito, and the next two lodges, in the highland forests. At the airport we foud out that our plane decided to leave two hours EARLY, without us. Managed to buy a ticket on the only other flight for two days and arrived in time to be picked up and driven to the next lodge – The Seventh Heaven Cloud Forest Lodge at Mindo, 1200m altitude. A fabulous labor of love, a never ending sprawl of true folly, with buildings all over the place in many styles, complex garden paths going on for ever, several pools, four-poster beds among ancient furniture, and see the afternoon tea palace, fountain and all, to get some idea of the wonderful excesses by the possessed human responsible.
Here be less insect excesses than the steamy Amazon, but still full of fun surprises. See skipper butterfly drinking from a weird flower.
and then there are the caterpillars competing in the who is more hairy game – is there a caterpillar under all that coiffure ?
and speaking of attitude, what about this assassin bug challenging the camera, followed by the always ready for action snap-jaw ant
those jaws are opened via a ratchet-like mechanism that compresses special elastin muscles and locks them into place in the open position. When threatened they close on the enemy in less than 130 microseconds, with an audible snap, and an acceleration of 100,000 gravities, causing death by uber-concussion. A Japanese film crew once got me to arrange a circus maximus of a snapjaw ant vs a bull ant. We are more scared of the bull ant’s sting, but to the snapjaw it was no contest … snap …. next ….
And now something for the squemish, one of the largest cockroaches in the world, the 8cm dude out and about at night in the drippy wet forest.
Well after all that murderous stuff and eeky stuff, here is something sweet
October 17
At the last lodge now, called Bella Vista, at 2,300m, truly in the clouds. I had come here 23 years ago and it is even more amazing now. The rooms are tastefully designed, with full wall glass to see the canopy of this forest on the ridge. So below, the first image is my room wall, and the next two are for extra mood – play something soothing like maybe Sibelius, and imagine the clouds rolling through the mossy forest…..
October 18
The last day in this amazing cloudy scape. The sun came out fully for a few hours and new critters were found. First the very weird story of how damselflies do the mystery dance. They do not meet back to back. First the male joins the matatarsal gooblitoggle to the girl’s onomatopea groogle, whereupon the boy transfers the …… see the picture and scratch head. The boy is the pretty blue.
OK, following it so far ? So then the boy keeps attached to the back of the neck of the girl, via the transverse grongle and the igiboo frondle, and she is carried flying by him over water, where he hovers just right for her bum to touch the water and deposit eggs. There.
The hummingbirds were very happy in the sun. The following sequence I call memory of hummers, with action stopped but not perfecty as their wingbeats are as fast as some insects.
Those of you who saw my Borneo blog remember the strange pseudo spiders called harvestmen or Opiliones, which as proved previously, are actually robots from outer space. Remember this picture below showing the impossibly long mechanical legs supporting the central control blob with ball-bearing joints.
Well one of their space ships must have crashed near here as on a night walk I saw many species. Here a vignette of their weird central body blobs.
October 19
Alas the last morning in Ecuador-land. Still at the very lofty 2300m altitude, where a fast walk gets the lungs pumping, and many birdies adorn the mossy forest. As fitting with a last day experience, a very South American event evented. The guide said that a toucan sometimes visits here in the mornings, maybe about 0730. And lo and behold, at 0730:00, it arrived in all its glory. Apart from strutting its stuff, it did mention that it is sorry to have posed for the FRUIT LOOPS box picture, and ruined a lot of children’s teeth.
So off to my least fav places on the planet – airports – three of them before I land in Glasgow and start phase two of this travel. Come back here sometimes and see the moody beauteous Scotland as I do the oooooooomm thing and drink in its soothing aura for the next 5 weeks.
SCOTLAND-land 2023
Week one – Isle of Skye
Yes now in Scotland-land. The weather as always is all weathers in one day – the local saying is “if you dont like the weather come back in 10 minutes” Phase one is Isle of Skye where everyone has to stop at a place called Sligahan, a bit of a crossroads where it just happens the scenery is extra bonny. The light changes constantly, here is variation 342.
Now just off the Isle is a little place called Glenelg, near which are spiffy ruins of a very Scottish nature, called Brochs. They are beehive shaped structures of superbly laid drystone in two layers, with a walkway between the layers, and in the old days a thatched roof. Them olden dudes built very well indeed. The main one is large, dating from about 200 BC, but missing 2/3 of itself because stupid lazy soldiers stole the stones for their barracks in the 1700ds. See also a pic of what it was like inside.
A small detail caught my fancy – it shows the prehistoricness of this structure, note how the few limestones among the slate and granites, have had time to form real live stalagmites (or is it tites).
Oh, and nearby was proof of an olden adage “dont make mountains out of molehills” Basically it appears that you cannot do so without impossible difficulties. The molehills below are only about 15cm high
….. below, 2 mountains for comparison.
Moss, moss and more moss. Scotland floats on a bed of moss, holding all the water that makes it so green. See a little birch forest with every tree having its own moss skirt. They look alive, like every night they move about getting a better possi.
On sunny days especially, the camera takes over and looks for kitsch postcard material. Below are two it decided were just right for today. The cute rustic boat with lake, reflections and mountain, vs the majestic hill-topping sheep with mountain. Choose.
and while on the subject of postcards, lets end today with the sunset over them hills, from the window of my wee cottage
So more adventures, of the armchair variety. See the pic below. Again a scene from a window of my cottage, showing the Isle of Raasay at sunset. In the middle is an interesting mountain top, which is a long ago extinct volcano, as known by all locals …. now the following story really did happen, I think in the prehistoric 80ties, involving a namless person I know. Possibly under the influence of mind relaxing substances, this person with accomplice, hatched a dastardly plan. They managed to get to the island with old tyres and dragged them to the top of this peak, whereupon they lit them up, causing much smoke to billow from said extinct volcano. The rest is many good pub stories.
So it was time to play with an oscilloscope, of course. The first pic is the pretty pattern when a flute does a complex piece. The second, my fav, is of course a bassoon playing some deep and meaningful notes.
The third is a ring in to catch you out. It is of course a charcoal drawing of the meeting of the lower thoracic and dudenal artery.
OR they are all pretty patterns made by a very receding tide on a beach on the east coast of Skye. In fact from the very point on the coast from which the next pic was taken, showing the said east coast of Skye and all its cute geology lessons.
A quiet day with much time spent in a hide, observing seals, and maybe otters, playing in a narrow sea passage between Skye and the mainland. Getting down there is on one of Scotland’s great drives, a narrow one lane road, super steep, a bit windey, with just the odd passing place as an afterthought.
On the way noticed that the great pyramid of Giza came to visit on the other side…
and on the way back, found one of those cute things about Scotland, the promise of ‘every weather all the time’. The clouds here reperesent 4 or maybe 5 separate layers, each with its own direction and speed of motion. Heavy traffic.
Now, I forgotted an important observation made on day one here. Walking a cliff path, came across a steep green hill with tottering windswept sheeps hanging on by their toenails. But hark, below them was Mrs Wile.E. Sheep – genius, who had carefully dug out a little cave for itself and quietly chewed her cud out of the wind and hubbub. See arrow.
And then it was time to sail over to the Isle of Raasay, it of the extinct volcano fame. It is very sweet and full of history, from prehistoric picts, to Queen Victoria’s relatives, and a fabulous walled garden. Like many parts of Scotland, one clan owned the lot, and the Laird lived in the ‘big house’, a real mansion. Back in the 1800ds, the Laird decided that his big house needed more culture, so he financed a very expensive ship expedition to Italy, with the brief that it come back with fabulous sculptures for his entrance. His fabulously art-appreciation-deficit relatives, returned many months later, nearly bankrupting the Laird, with two statues of exquisite “what the f-ness” value. A Michaelangelo or Botticelli marbles they aint. The Laird ordered them away onto the battery point of the island, unseen from his house, where amazingly their granite matched the local stone. (I personally would love them either side of the door of my kultured Canberra house)
Another thing about Scotland that is most endearing are the stone fences. Some are made from granite stones so large it must have been Asterix who put them in place. But always they are perfect, artisitic and everlasting. See this one on Raasay.
And the last obseravtion from Raasay was this wee boat in the harbour. “the common cormorant or shag, lays its eggs inside of a paper bag,…..” and it seems also lays its wonderfully off-fish smelling poo poo into boats. This boat now named HMS Fertiliser.
Week two – the Isles of Harris & Lewis
It was time to say bye bye to Skye and head to the port of Uig for the big ferry ride to the Outer Isles of Harris and Lewis. A small hitch – rope around the propeller, needed divers in the lovely warm waters to extricate, and caused a half day delay. Harris hills have a very particular pattern of colour and texture, an interplay with the yellow native grasses and the light granites. (and love the baby lighthouse guarding the bay)
Harris, the smaller southern island, is famous for its Carribean beaches. They may be a wee bit too cold for a dip, but the unlikely combination of tropical beach with Scottish hills is very original. Todays’ postacards below.
In the same area is a famous 15th century church, St Clements, with several real live knight burial chambers, looking like something from king Arthur tales, and a less solemn carving of a bishop type dude, with very long fingers, doing the “alas poor Yorik, I knew him well” scene
It was time to visit the most famous bit of the Outer Isles, the standing stones of Callinish. Proper 5000 year old “how the f did they do it” full circle, still upright. My first visit here was about 40 years ago, on the actual summer solstice, when celestial bits lign up with stone bits and modern day twee druids go apeshit. This time I was the only one there, on a thrillingly minus minus wind chill factor day.
Followed by me freezing my little titties off waiting for the sunset, so you dear armchair traveller, could see the other side in a pleasing light.
There is another almost full circle I saw in the Orkneys times ago, the Ring of Brodgar, and it chose to be seen in a much more interesting light.
And then, the weather here decided to get interesting. Britain now often gets super storm cells, like mini cyclones, that they name like we name cyclones. The last one was only 2 weeks ago and flooded large areas and generally caused havoc. Today is the arrival of the next one. So it was time to storm-chase and see what the swell was doing to the sea. I might live longer than that stack…
Yes it was hard to stay upright. It reminds me of so many other proper Scottish weather memories, like the backwards waterfalls at Loch Maree some years back
and in all that mayhem, mr God must have dropped something, and was using ‘the searchlight of God’ to find it
Scotland is powered entirely by green energy, thanks to lots of rain – hydro, and its very very abundant wind. So it is rare to have fully still days, though your chances of finding one are often just after a big blow. The thousands of lochs great and weeny, turn on reflections. This one had a population of ducks that kept mucking up the stillness with their great hairy paddles, but still a bit cute.
The first two days of this sojourn I had young ones travelling with us to, and on, Skye. They saw great wonders, almost all on their wish list, but alas the famous Scottish hairy highland cows were not to be seen. So here, 10 days later I finally spent time with a bunch on Lewis, and very relaxed they was.
Week 3 – Achnasheen and the Torridon
Another morning in another cottage. The ferry from Lewis to the mainland, lands at one of my fav little places, the northernmost town-let in the Highlands, Ullapool, with them highlands towering above.
what there is to report is the drive last nite. At sunset I came to this cute little fluffy roll of fog over a small loch. So sweet and compact – NOT. It was the start of a pea-sooper, in the dark, for the next 70km of slow driving, waiting to see a deer in the headlights. Tired.
Morning. Gosh and golly – another very still day in the Highlands. Every loch was doing the thing, the reflection diorama. Fun for all the boys and girls.
Not many trees in Scotland do the red thing, like maple, but the oranges and yellows get very deep and meaningful. My fav is the wonderfully odd Larch, a pine tree what is deciduous, and drops its needles in a spray of gold.
and on a very different subject – there you are driving along and seeing more and more of dem lovely hills and glens and lochs, and suddenly – what the f ! an oil rig just sitting there on land.
Here, in the middle of nowhere (by European standards) is a busy giant dry dock, capable of working on the biggest oil rigs, windmills, and ships in general. It is a 100m deep port called Kishorn.
Once upon a time most of Scotland was covered in neverending forests of fabulously individual character trees called Caledonian, or Scotch pines. Unlike the other Pinus species which are all clones of the exact same shape, these dudes express themselves with aplomb
this lot is on the edge of Loch Maree, and area where nature is allowed to reclaim its former glory. Driving around here can be very distracting, as nasty scenery keeps interfering with ‘eyes on the road’, eeeny weeny roads.
and another one of dem ‘every weather in one day’, days. Drove around the Applecross peninsula, on the mainland, facing the Isle of Skye. Blobs of rain, and rays from heaven, made good kitsch postcards. Here are two of Skye on the horizon.
Like many humans, I is a weather tragic. Note that the above scene was chosen not just for the fab light, but for the rain it is shining through. I love to see the edges/starts of weather events. Over the years I have caught great edges of rain, and even snow events moving in, but never have I ever seen an edge of a hail event. Sitting on the edge of Loch Maree, listening to a rare event here -a real thunder storm coming – I noticed that the wall of white, coming along the storm edge, was making the water surface white, and caught this shot before I was in it. Wowski.
I once bamboozled a rental car dude by asking if the insurance covered hail. After much befuddlement and empty stares, I explained that in Oz cars are a right-off after being hit by golf ball plus sized ice. Here in high latitudes, storm clouds are not very high, like our great anvil structures, so do not cook/circulate the ice as much. Generally throwing it down as sand grains. So it was nice to witness what must be extra rare, as not only did the thunder shake the earth, but the hail was 5mm, gosh and golly.
and now for something completely different. The sea lochs that have shallow edges, sometimes have very fetching structures of little mounds with super green haircuts, composed of a grass which can handle the sea water. The patterns and reflections are very sweet. Below one from yesterday, and a detail from a past sunny day.
Scotland is a moody place. Changes its demeanor many times a day. Sometimes I just sit and look at a fav view and get two very different pics in one session. And of course I have been here in all seasons too. There is a baby loch on a little plateau above Loch Torridon, which I call My Loch, and take a picture there from the same spot every time I have been here. See below 4 different moods.
Damn now you got me started. Just one more, rather extreme example. In fact from the same spot, to the left, is the view of the whole of Loch Torridon. Again I have many moods on film. First as it was yesterday, on a simple sunny day. Then as it was on summer solstice, with the sun setting behind me about midnight, some years ago…
This could be a slippery slope, but just one more. If you turn a little to the right, and use mr zoom, there is the full moon rising, as it always does at sunset.
Week 4 – Dolphin house
A long drive day to get to the very out of the way Dolphin cottage in Laga Bay, close to the village of Salen. On the way, one passes the secret location of the fairy forest, easy to miss but impossibly memorable once experienced. It is the real deal, real fluffy-wuffy fairies and naughty sprites abound in this little wonderland. Behold…
So the next very sunny day was spent at the Glen-finnan area. A most famous place long before Harry Potter movies propelled it to the stratosphere. It is here that the Hogwarts express passes over the giant viaduct. The movies used the real setting and the real steam chu chu, which still carries tourists over this line. I did the trip in a 1st class cabin once, to be in the movie set. But what is really amazing is the structure itself – as a feat of old style engineering it makes the Colliseum look like a backyard shed. It is veeerrrrrrrry high, held, like all arches, by tension and compression, only after the last bit is in place. But during construction, it is of course held up by magic, as wielded by the Scots engineer on the plaque below. Note, this impossible feat was accomplished in 15 months, about 150 years ago !!!!!
Fully effing amazing eh but what. I have only been able to find one picture of construction, and it clearly shows the magic matchsticks.
And before the railway came here, about 100 years earlier, this was the place of one of the more famous biffos between the kilt humans and the poms (of course). There is a museum here with a very detailed cute diorama of the battle scene. The makers were absolutely accurate to the last detail, including this lipstick wearing dude…..
And it was time to visit, yet again, the great Ardnamurchen lighthouse on the most westerly point of Gt Britain. In 1849 it was built – of course – by another genius Scottish engineer, who used pink granite from the Isle of Mull, and adorned it with little egyptian flourishes. It is fully BIG, and still operational – though now using LED light.
This is all very well, but the real magic is the foghorn. Not all lighthouses have them, but if they do, it has to be very very powerful to be of use. The earliest design, by a Scottish engineer of course, was a steam powered one in Canada. Many of you have heard a big ship use its horn….. great low rumble to pierce the fog….. but the one here is much bigger, I could fit inside happily. And note the big red pipe
follow it and you wind up here
Imagine what a grunge rock band could do with this. Three monster engines all puffing away to fill that pipe with the energy to make the horn SING. It faces the sea of course, but the locals in the village 5 miles inland say it sounds just fine there. It is my dream to be here during a good fog.
On the way there I noticed just how well deer blend into a landscape. There a 20 in the image below
Though it be not clever to be on a ridge – and yes its true, the male has 7 legs.
and speaking of four legged beasts, I have been having fun with the local otter. My little house is right on the water of a sea loch, and a very naughty otter plays just outside. I have tried for over an hour to get a pic of it surfacing and facing me, it is fully unscared. But everytime it has surfaced, with prescience, it surfaced where the camera is not. In the days of film I would have watsed hundreds of dollars of cellulose. So eventually I almost caught the little blighter on the very edge of photographic reality – cute.
Scotland is famous for the term “all seasons every day” and indeed it is often so. Generally however, autumn, apart from the nice colours, is also the most weather friendly. But what a difference a day (or two make). My last day on the mainland, on the Ardnamurchen peninsula, was like a perfect summer day
Week 5 – Isle of Skye reprise
The next day was spent travelling back to the Isle of Skye, whereupon the weather turned grizzly with every mile. A wonderfully ‘rolling seas’ ferry crossing, followed by proper horizontal rain setting in. My new abode is right on the sea, with a full glass front, so even though it has hemmed me inside, I have a view through the wind spattered drops. I too am an armchair tourist for the present.
And – ping – the wether changed again, just in time for a late colour kitsch postcard, and a lovely moonrise.
Some villages in the UK still have the original red phone boxes, much photographed. Many still have working coin phones. And some are not even in a village, but in the middle of lovely vistas, like this one on the way to the lighthouse.
and lo and behold, as Oz heads into another dreary boring hot summer, here ‘winter is coming’, a shame to leave at such a sublime time
… and it was time to leave Skye and head north on the mainland. One of the first landmarks on the route is the most photographed castle in Scotland, Eilean Donan. Being on a sea loch and having the distant backdrop of the Isle of Skye, helps. Here it is in normal guise today, and during one long late summer twillight, on a trip some years ago.
So the last full day of exploring, off to one of the last old growth mixed forests in Scotland, Glen Affric, west of Inverness. Many trees live here but it is the magnificent Scotch or Caledonian pines that stand out when allowed to get old. A few cute reflections here too, on what turned out to be a sunny arvo.
and then head south to exit stage left. A last observation about the names here. For a very long time the old gaelic place names have been placed next to the englicised ones. They are rarely very different, though of course unpronouncable in that lovely soft ‘lordofthe rings’ way. See the typical sign below
Some quite cute, like the following one that will mean something to the humans I worked with in the Health Dept…
and then my ancient brain had a right proper senior moment par excellence. I was wandering why my last hotel said my booking was for the day before…. finally the truth dawned like a very black cloud of clarity. I had my days of the week and dates mixed up, not important every other day of the holiday, but now out by one eeeeny weeeny little day, which just happened to be my day of flying home – MISSED all flights. So apropo the local place names, it took me back to my fav village name in Scotland, the village of ….. in the Orkneys, very apt at this moment, visited some years ago.
Goodnight and thank you for armchairing along…
SIX-LEGS-GOOD 